Not far from my hometown, on the south side of the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge, there is a tomb that is not very large, the height of the tomb is only 2.2 meters, the circumference is only 12 meters, and the tomb bridge looks like a desolate tomb, and the weeds are overgrown and fallen leaves, which looks like a tomb of an ordinary person. But who could have imagined that under this grave, there was actually buried a peasant emperor who had once commanded an army of millions, raced across the country for many years, and once reigned as a king? His name is Chen Youyu.
Chen Youyi, whose original name was Chen Jiusi, was a native of Qiuyang, Hubei, who was born on May 5, 1320, on a fishing boat in the Lake District. The story passed down by the local population says that when he was born, he was born with a strange appearance, strong winds, torrential rains, and a green dragon flying in the sky. Therefore, the local people said that Chen Youyu was the reincarnation of the Green Dragon.
Chen Youyu read when he was young, slightly familiar with the meaning of the text, had excellent strength, and idly studied martial arts. In the year when he was 20 years old, he won a local competition and won the championship in one fell swoop, not only being recorded as a county official by the county order, but also marrying Zhou Meiren, who was both talented and beautiful. It can be said that power, wealth, and sex are three harvests, but this is not his goal.
Just at this time, the Red Turban Army uprising that swept the whole country quickly overthrew the brutal Yuan Dynasty rule, the crowd chased deer, Chen Youyu also led the villagers into the red turban army Xu Shouhui's troops, is a bookkeeper under Ni Wenjun's account, probably a petty official in charge of the general affairs book, and then, gradually promoted to marshal with military merit, in fact, the name marshal is very scary, but it was not worth much at the time, in ancient times, the military commanders were called marshals, and when the end of the Yuan Dynasty was in chaos, all the people who pulled up a pole, even if they were cats and dogs, as long as they held one hundred and eighty bird people, They all call themselves marshals, and they have the meaning of being bold and frightening, and entertaining themselves. Later Taiping Heavenly Kingdom kings, as well as the "commanders" of the Republic of China period, today the streets are full of "presidents" and "chairmen" are roughly the same.
Of course, later, with his military achievements, Chen Youyu did have an army in his hands, when Xu Shouhui, the emperor of the Heavenly Perfection Kingdom, conspired with the chancellor Ni Wenjun to push the taishi Zou Pusheng out of the decision-making level. Soon, this chancellor took over the power and showed that he did not put the Emperor of Heaven in his eyes. As a result, Emperor Xu Shouhui prepared to revive the use of Zou Pusheng to restrain Ni Wenjun. After Ni Wenjun found out, he brought chen youyou, a confidant who had repeatedly promoted him and was now an independent person, and discussed simply killing Xu Shouhui and becoming the emperor himself.
Just when Ni Wenjun set a trap and launched a mutiny, and the Emperor of Tianquan was already in a desperate situation, Chen Youyu suddenly turned against him, and in the name of protecting the King of Qin, he led his elite troops to fight three times and five divisions and two, and later killed Ni Wenjun, absorbing all his forces into his own hands. Chen Youyu thus became the first heavy minister under the Emperor of the Heavenly Perfection Kingdom, not only holding heavy power, but also holding heavy troops, calling himself Pingzhang political affairs, and his ambitions were gradually exposed.
Two years later, Chen Youyu once again with the same room, killing Zhao Pusheng, the most popular and important general of the Red Turban Army, and then, in the name of reporting military information to the emperor, he arranged for a guard to smash Xu Shouhui's head with a hammer. As a result, Chen Youyu established himself as emperor, changed the name of the country to the Great Han, changed the era name to the first year of Dayi, and took Jiangzhou, which is today's Jiujiang, Jiangxi, as the capital. At that time, Chen Youyu was 40 years old.
The reason why this down-to-earth peasant Chen Youyu was able to become emperor was that later, when Zhu Yuanzhang was crusading against him, he called him a "three-kill" madman, that is, killing his superiors, killing his masters, and killing his subordinates, and finally only Chen Youyu, Zhu Yuanzhang, and Zhang Shicheng were left, and the war for the world finally began.
Chen Youyi is tough and suspicious, and likes to control his subordinates with power techniques. Having proclaimed himself emperor and occupying all the lands of Jiangxi and Huguang, he claimed that his army was strong and wanted to attack Ying Tianfu (ying tianfu) (present-day Nanjing, Jiangsu) to the east. Zhu Yuanzhang, fearing that Chen Youyu and Zhang Shicheng would unite, sent Hu Dahai to take Guangxin Province (廣信府, in modern Shangrao, Jiangxi) to cut off his way back, and then ordered Chen Youyu's old friend Kang Maocai to write a letter to lure him and make him come quickly. Chen Youyu did indeed lead the water division east to jiangdong bridge, call kang maocai, no one agreed, only to learn that he had been deceived. The two sides fought at Longwan (on the outskirts of present-day Nanjing, Jiangsu), and Chen Youyu was defeated, because the tide fell, the ship was stranded, countless people died, and hundreds of warships were lost, and Chen Youyu had to escape in a small boat. Feng Guosheng led the Five Roads Army to pursue with victory, and defeated Chen Youyu at Quarry Rock. So Chen Youyu abandoned Taiping and fled to Jiangzhou. Zhu Yuanzhang's army took advantage of the victory to capture Anqing, and Chen Youyi's troops surrendered their weapons to Guang and Ou Puxiang. The following year, Chen Youyi sent Zhang Dingbian to attack Anqing again.
In August 1361 (to the 21st year of Zheng), Zhu Yuanzhang personally led an army to fight, and Yu Tonghai and Zhao Desheng broke Chen Youyi's water army in Anqing and drove straight into Jiangzhou. Chen Youyi was defeated and fled to Wuchang with his wife and children overnight. Zhu Yuanzhang conquered Jiangzhou, took advantage of the victory to capture Puzhou, and then captured Anqing. His generals Wu Hong surrendered with Raozhou, Wang Pu with Jianchang, and Hu Tingrui with Longxing.
Chen Youyu was furious at seeing that his territory was dwindling, so he built hundreds of building ships. Each of these ships is several feet tall and decorated with Dan lacquer, each with three floors and a horse carriage, the voices of the people under the boat are not heard from each other, and the boxes are wrapped in iron. He personally led an army of 600,000 people, and the ship carried hundreds of family members and officials, and attacked Nanchang with all his elites, rushing through the car with flying ladders and advancing on hundreds of roads. Zhu Yuanzhang's nephew Zhu Wenzheng and Zheng Yu held nanchang for three months, Zhu Yuanzhang personally led an army to the rescue, Chen Youyu heard that Zhu Yuanzhang was coming, so he removed the siege of Nanchang and went east out of Poyang Lake.
After the Battle of Poyang Lake broke out, due to the huge size and staggering number of Chen Youyi's warships, and the soldiers were good at fighting on the water, Zhu Yuanzhang repeatedly lost soldiers and generals. Later, Zhu Yuanzhang followed the example of the Chibi War during the Three Kingdoms period, using iron cables and boats, and the way of burning warships finally defeated Chen Youyi's water army in one fell swoop. History is surprisingly repeated, but although Cao Mengde Chibi was defeated, he was able to escape and later achieve the great cause of Cao Wei. Chen Youyu was not so lucky, when he reached out on the ship to check the enemy's situation, he was suddenly shot by a stream of arrows and died, and suddenly, Chen Youyu's army collapsed and finally perished.
The great river goes east, the waves are exhausted, and the characters of the ages are flowing. In the long history of our country, some people have left their names in history and monuments have survived; some people have withdrawn from the scene in the dark, such as the remnants of the sunset, and finally can only accept the fate of falling into the Western Mountains. After Chen Youyu was buried, Zhu Yuanzhang personally visited Chen Youyu's tomb to pay tribute and inscribed the four characters "Man Repairs Heavenly Determination" in front of the tomb. The meaning of ridicule is overflowing with words, to the effect that only Zhu Yuanzhang himself is the true son of destiny, and you Chen Youyu are not not working hard, but there is no use in working hard!
Although Chen Youyu finally defeated Zhu Yuanzhang's hands, a peasant from a fisherman's family was able to establish himself as an emperor, and he also made a lot of contributions in the cause of resisting the Yuan, and on the whole, he can be regarded as a generation of heroes. And such a historical celebrity, in the end, only had to stand here in this lonely grave, watching the traffic and traffic, and no one cared about it for a hundred years, which really made people sigh.